UPBit Executives framed by Korean Prosecutors. Can they get through?

South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, UPBit’s three top executives are accused of making fraudulent transactions, according to the Seoul Southern Seoul District Prosecutors’ Office report published by The Korea Herald on December 21st.

According to the Korean daily, Upbit’s three executives; a board chairman, a financial director, and a working-level executive supposedly opened a fake account around September last year and made fictitious orders worth 254 trillion won ($226.2 billion).

The three executives were allegedly involved in fraudulent transactions from September to December last year, to maximize the currency transactions and lure more customers, according to the Seoul Southern Seoul District Prosecutors’ Office.

The prosecutors’ allege that UpBit’s executives sold 11,550 bitcoins to around 26,000 customers from September to December last year and cropped 150 billion won.

The representative from Prosecutors’ Office said

“I’m worried about investors who may lose money in this market because of exchanges like UPbit. We need a way to make the market and the industry fair and transparent.”

However, UpBit, when confronted, refused the allegation and published a notice on its official website. We can also remember that the Korean prosecutors raided UpBit’s head office in the Gangnam-gu district in May this year and seized accounting books and hard disks.

Upbit is South Korea’s number one operator of cryptocurrency, with more than 50 percent market share. UpBit is the third largest exchange platform globally for cryptocurrency in terms of trade volume, reaching $241 million in December’18, according to the Blockchain Transparency Institute.

Upbit also justified that the cross trading that is alleged to have taken place was purely for the benefit of customers and was minimal “For about two months after launching the service, some cross trading took place for marketing purposes. However, such trading had no influence on the market price, and the volume of such trading took up about 3% of the total trade volume at that time.”

The Korean exchange also noted that its auditor had confirmed three times this year, i.e., on Jan 19th, June 28th, and Oct 8th, that it’s both cash and cryptocurrency balance exceeds the amount payable to customers.

Releasing a statement on Dec 21st the company quoted “As of Oct 8th when the most recent audit took place, Upbit held about 103% of the cryptocurrencies payable to customers. Also, Upbit’s bank balance is 165% of the cash payable to customers.”

Do you think UpBit involved in cross trading of cryptocurrency? Share your thoughts in the comment?